


the traveler

by Zakyuu



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dreamtale, Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Dimension Travel, Multi, Survivalist!Dream, Undertale Multiverse, headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 08:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zakyuu/pseuds/Zakyuu
Summary: There's a legend among the worlds, about a traveler with no name to address him by.He comes and goes like a wisp of air, never settling long enough for anyone to recognize him.To those who do know of his plight, are kept silent...Just who is this traveler? What are his goals, who is he trying to find?I think a better question would be...Who is he running from?(Alternatively: Dream is sick and tired of trying to bring hope and dreams to people who are never satisfied with his efforts. He'd rather just disappear.He does exactly that.)
Relationships: Bad Sanses Poly + Error & Lust, Dream/Wanderlust, Ink/a punch in the face, You Heard me - Relationship
Comments: 41
Kudos: 73





	1. capability

**Author's Note:**

> Just short chapters. Don't expect long ones! (literally my limit is one page per chapter. Cheers!)
> 
> I'd be sorry for the new story but at this point this is stress relief for me so at least let me have this.
> 
> (Also, writing style will change from time to time!)

He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. Does anyone?

What a foolish question. Dream knows for a fact that most if not all of the multiverse’s inhabitants have gotten their lives figured out. If they haven’t, they at least have someone to turn to.

Core Frisk has their little assistants to look after. What was it called…The Overseer Project, yes, that. More importantly, they had the Omega Timeline to manage. For a time, Dream considered working with them, but…his presence, he noted, was not necessarily required or needed.

He left before it could become a permanent thing.

He’d wanted to stay with Blue, for the time being, but his brother Stretch was getting a bit agitated by his presence. Dream could understand. Sometimes Dream himself couldn’t stand his own self.

So he left Underswap to its devices. No point trying to stay when he kept overstaying his welcome, right?

He didn’t want to stay with Ink. That was out of the question. He could _work_ with Ink, certainly, but Dream much rather preferred if he avoided the artist outright.

Dream had temporarily settled down in a relatively unknown AU, hidden away from prying eyes. He’d been drifting for so long, briefly making stops to various AUs, that he’s begun to realize isn’t…healthy.

So he’d called for a temporary break for himself.

Not that anyone was around to hear it.

Joy.

So here he was, despondently eating a piece of bread. On an empty crate turned upside down to create a makeshift table.

Dream sighs as he sets his food down on the table. He wasn’t quite hungry anymore.

He shifts backwards, until the cool concrete meets his spine. That was nice.

He doesn’t remember how long its been since he had nice thing. He’s lost count of the days.

Dream gave up on the whole…Guardian of Hopes and Dreams thing. It was far too difficult for someone like him.These days, he just wanders in and out of places.

It’s all he’s ever good at.


	2. contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did he ever really matter?
> 
> Sources say no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dreamtale belongs to Jokublog :0  
> Core Frisk belongs to Dokudoki  
> everyone else...undertale community? Except obvious ones. uhm. comment if you want to know who made who.
> 
> Wanderer/traveler Dream concept comes from me though.

He barely keeps in contact with anyone, these days.

Oh sure, he spends some time in Blue’s world if he’s around, exchanges pleasantries with Core Frisk every time he visits the Omega Timeline (which is not as often as one might think), but…it’s here that Dream realizes that in his mission, he’s isolated himself from a lot of people.

So unlike his brother. So very unlike Nightmare.

Ah. Right. His brother doesn’t go by Nightmare anymore. To be honest, Dream likes that his dear brother chose to shed away his old name. It held nothing but pain and heartache, and it was a clear sign that his brother was moving on.

He was happy for his brother, honest!

It’s just…well…

What about him?

Would he only forever be ‘Dream’ to everyone? That idiotic naïve golden goody-two-shoes he’s crafted his persona to be?

He huffs a bitter laugh at the thought. Why would it be anything else? It’s not like anyone would want to know the real him anyway. ~~Ink~~ The Artist never cared. Blue was far too busy to notice, as sweet as he was.

And Brother was too far invested in his own business to ever pay any attention. It’s fine. It’s better this way.

It’s better that people’s expectations of him are so high that he’s nigh unrecognizable when he plainly doesn’t meet those standards. It’s…freeing, in a way, to hide behind a façade of cheerfulness and ignorance, so people don’t see the war-torn, broken, beaten down monster he’s had to become just to survive.

Brother may have had his castle, the remains of their home, power and connection reaching far and wide to support himself.

But ‘Dream’? All he had was a stupid stick and the burning desire to see his brother happy again.

It’s so stupid. So stupidly tragic that people forget about it in its entirety. For all that Brother suffered the catastrophe -- many disregard the suffering he had to go through in the aftermath of the incident.

…No. Not disregard. That was the wrong word for it.

After all, no one would know…if no one knew about it in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hah, i love dream angst. its delicious.


	3. master

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's got more tricks up his sleeve than anyone realizes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a warning some chapters might not be chronological lol

Dream finds knives ridiculously useful. They’re small, convenient, and most of all, deadly. In the early days, he rarely used his staff, didn’t know how to use his bow and arrows.

And then he found a knife. Dream was taken by how light and fiddly the knife was. Such a rusted, broken thing, and yet, Dream still liked it.

It’s a secret he’s only ever shared with Blue. No one else knows.

Another thing about Dream is that he likes having things. Call it a remnant of his past, but he’s done having everything taken away from him. He wants to have -- well, everything. But he doesn’t want to hurt people. He just…wants, okay?

So it starts with small things. Food, gold, everyday items that people consume and use. They’re easier to collect, to hoard. People hardly miss a penny or two, after all. And food -- well, Dream does so love to snack on things.

And then it extended to clothes. After a very educational trip to Lusttale, Dream sees the value in fashion, and that translated to him hoarding clothes whenever he sees a particularly interesting article of clothing.

One fateful day, Dream starts collecting knives.

It was something purely accidental, on his part. He didn’t really mean to keep the butterfly knife Blue had handed to him during dinner that one time. But he was surprised to find out that he was hard-pressed to return it, as well.

That’s where it began. AU to AU, place to place, Dream started snatching knives, bartering knives, and buying knives with the meager money he had. It didn’t matter how quality the knife was -- if it was small, Dream bought it.

He gets the idea of using them for combat after he and the Star Sanses encounter Killer (is he even Killer? He knows Brother’s people have chosen new names…) on a mission. The expert way the Sans throws his knives -- all with a deadly accuracy left him in awe.

Dream finds…he wants that. He’s good at aiming already, why can’t he do it with knives? Turns out there’s a whole avenue for knife-throwing that he needs to learn before he starts successfully using it to fight someone.

It really is too bad he masters the art as soon as he decides to run away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yknow, writing short chapters like this is actually quite therapeutic. 
> 
> have fun with the knowledge of my version of dream being good at using knives. its all in good fun!
> 
> _until it isn't._


	4. meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trip to the past.

Dream hides quite a few things, even from himself.

Biggest example? He’s not as ‘kind and compassionate’ as people seem to assume he is.

He awoke to a world where Brother was a cruel overlord with very powerful minions and a grudge to grind. He was in a place where there were no rules in place, no guidelines or instructions to follow to reach the end goal.

Dream awoke, with only one goal in his mind: survive.

Dream’s not proud of the decisions he made. Who would be? But he did what he had to. He hurt people, lied, stole, cheated and scammed people. He made lives harder than they had to be. And yet, he would never, not in every lifetime, would he take those decisions back.

He did these things for a reason. It was never malicious.

But, well, he’s always been a survivalist. After first escaping from his stony prison, he was immediately accosted by bandits, thieves, the like. Stars, even Brother was there trying to hunt him down.

So yes, he hid himself. Just…not in the way anyone expected him to. Least of all Brother. Dream covered himself in dirt. Camped in the forest. Ate meat raw. Scavenged for edible things.

There was one time he’d stolen from a merchant.

And to be fair, that merchant was a douchebag anyway. Perhaps that was why Dream felt a deep sense of satisfaction after stealing all the riches and trade items the merchant had on him.

Dream didn’t kill him, stars no.

But he wasn’t saying no to giving concussions.

To put it bluntly, Dream did what was necessary until he was reasonably sure he could support himself without compromising his morals.

Although at that point, who knew how high his morals were. It certainly felt low to him.

That kind of thing was routine until Ink found him.

To be more accurate, Dream tried to stab Ink and found himself tied up.

“Haha, wow!” said the outcode who would one day become one of Dream’s greatest friend and foe. “I’ve never seen a Sans that could catch me off guard like that!”

“My name is Dream, not Sans,” he’d replied, sealing his fate in stone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh hey, lookit that. another update. aren't you guys lucky?
> 
> btw, if you'd like to see a prototype of what wanderer/traveler dream looks like, stay tuned for my tumblr, which is [here](https://zakyuu.tumblr.com/). feel free to suggest some stuff!
> 
> also, if you like what I do there, like, art and stuff, consider buying me a [Ko-fi!](https://ko-fi.com/zakyuu)
> 
> don't mind the commissions page lmfaoooo im still trying to work that out.


	5. identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Existential Crises are never fun to deal with.

It’s surprisingly easy for Dream to slip back under the radar now that no one would try dragging him into pointless multiverse saving shenanigans. (Looking at you, Ink.) Now that Brother has calmed down considerably and is merely collecting all the outcasts of the multiverse, Dream can’t really find it in himself to interfere.

“It’s a good thing, what your brother is doing,” Core Frisk had commented. “The Omega Timeline is open to all, but I fear its inhabitants will not take kindly to the more…volatile, of people.”

“...So why am I here?” Dream had asked, in a moment of self-doubt.

Core had looked at him with something close to pity. “…Often times,” they said, looking into the distance. “People do or say things they don’t mean. Good or bad, lies and deceit can be found in both.”

The words had stuck with Dream until he finally understood.

Until he finally learned to let go.

* * *

“...Will you visit?” Core had asked, a tone neither hopeful nor resentful. Just a simple query.

“I don’t know,” Dream replied simply. They left it that, and squeezed Dream’s hand.

They pretended not to notice when the skeleton’s eyesockets watered, and tears spilled down his skull.

It was at this point that he was ‘Dream’ no longer. He hated that name. Hated what it implied. It represented a part of his life that was full of failure. Filled with mistakes and ignorance that cost him everything he ever loved.

So, yeah, he hated his name.

So did everyone else that mattered to him. Hated his name, that is.

He’d wondered, should he change it? What did he even change it into?

Nothing.

He named himself nothing.

It was fitting, wasn’t it? There was nothing left for him. Nothing for him to do, to see, to save.

So why should he have a name?

Instead, he leaves himself nameless. The less people knew what to address him by, the better.

_Ironically enough, that seemed to be the start of the legend of the traveler._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah hi im not dead, sorry!
> 
> i'll be honest im writting this by the skin of my teeth i just want to laze around doing nothing dream is my unofficial comfort character SO this is just written whenever im in the mood


	6. remnant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something he needs to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **> _**
> 
> **> select file 'guardianofpositivity.zip'_**
> 
> **> ERROR: That file no longer exists._**
> 
> **> search: 'outcode_dream.exe'_**
> 
> **> File not found.**

He wants nothing more than for Brother to be happy. From then, up till now, that’s all he ever wished. It was selfish, it was cold, but that’s what his SOUL truly desired.

Even if it meant removing himself from the picture.

Was it a little dramatic? Perhaps.

But he never wanted to look back.

Before he disappeared for good, he wanted to let Brother know, one last time.

That Brother could be free from him. Free from the burden of cycle. The burden of balance.

The burden of Negativity and Positivity.

So he left his crown in Brother’s room. (How he’d snuck into the castle is a secret he will forever keep in his heart.)

“May the stars guide you to everlasting joy, Brother…” he whispers, setting the crown in a well-hidden spot -- behind the headboard of Brother’s rather large bed.

He remembers this bed. He and Brother had it made way before the incident, and they’d slept on it together once or twice. To think Brother had kept it after all these years…Ah, well, that doesn’t matter now. If he recalls correctly, there should be a groove where -- there it is.

With a small twist, he clicks his crown in place in the small circular engraving behind the headboard. It was especially made to hold their crowns while they were asleep, which is convenient for him. It made the perfect spot to leave his beloved crown.

Stepping back, he inspects his handiwork.

It’s perfect. The center point of his crown is the only thing visible, the shine practically drowned out by the darkness ebbing and flowing inside Brother’s room.

As much as he doesn’t like anyone knowing what he’s done, he’d at least like to give the people he cares about some warning.

As he turns to the window to make his escape, his eye catches a picture frame by Brother’s bedside. It’s face is turned down, so, curiosity piqued, he takes a look.

Oh. It’s him and Brother, young and happy.

Heart thumping loudly in his chest, he takes a knife out of his pocket and very carefully scratches out his face. It’s a message. He’s _done._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not refer to him as ~~"Dream"~~ anymore. That person no longer exists.

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like, you can check out my other works for the Undertale fandom. 
> 
> Or you can suggest really good Angsty Dream fics! I'll always welcome those!
> 
> Updates are sporadic.


End file.
